How To Improve Your New Employee Onboarding Process

JANUARY 9, 2019

The recruitment process for a position on your team has just ended. Ann is counting down the last hours in her old job and she can't wait to start working with you. Finally, her first day begins, and she's ready for action!

Unfortunately, she can't start. It turns out, her workstation is not ready yet – the IT specialist had to deal with something important yesterday, and he didn't have time for this. How to begin without a computer and the access to systems? How to communicate with others without an email account? Where to find the employee handbook?

The whole plan of a smooth employee onboarding is ruined, and your company didn't put itself in the best light for Ann. A new employee onboarding carried out without a checklist is a waste of people's time. Does your company want the new employees to experience the poor organization, or just feel being left out?

How the best companies onboard new employees

Large companies must have a well-organized onboarding process. Otherwise, they lose a lot of time and expose themselves to an unnecessary turnover. According to the study carried out by Digitate, employees dissatisfied with their onboarding are twice as likely to look for a new job in the near future. We've checked how they're doing this at Twitter:

When a new employee comes to work on the first day, the desk, the computer, and the e-mail account are waiting for them, along with the employee handbook and the schedule of the day. The employee also receives a company T-shirt and a bottle of wine. The day begins with breakfast with their superior. Then, they meet with important people from HR, IT, and the operations and go to lunch with their own team. Finally, they begin training sessions designed for their position.

The whole process is simple but consists of over 75 steps, the first being the decision to take the job (hence the name of their onboarding process: "Yes to Desk"). A large company often means a large checklist. However big your company is, nothing prevents you from taking advantage of the formal onboarding process of a new employee.

What should be included in the employee onboarding checklist?

A number of people from HR, IT, and the operations will take part in the preparation of the workstation and the new employee orientation process. Regardless of the position, you usually need to take care of the following:

collect new employee's personal data,

prepare and sign the employment contract,

prepare a desk,

set up a computer,

set up a mobile phone,

set up an email account,

give access to company systems,

order a security badge,

conduct training appropriate for the position,

meet local legal requirements (like safety at work training).

Simply writing down these tasks will help you to onboard new employees more efficiently. But in order to optimize this process and meet deadlines, you will need a proper tool.

FlowBoard will streamline your employee onboarding process

You can use FlowBoard to automate new employees onboarding. FlowBoard lets you design various business processes without involving the IT department. Select one of the pre-made templates for the employee onboarding process and customize it for your needs or create your own template from scratch. A template defines how a specific process will be executed each time in the future.

FlowBoard automatically assigns tasks to the right people and ensures their timely execution.

In the process template, you can specify what information about the new hire will be required to begin (full name, position, first day) and what tasks need to be completed. You assign the right person to the tasks and set the time of their execution.

From now on, when hiring an employee in your organization, simply fill in a short form in FlowBoard. Then it will automatically create a copy of the tasks from the template and assign them to the right people. FlowBoard will remind them about the due dates and will support the execution of the processes.

Every person involved in the employee onboarding process will be notified by email if they have any new task to do.

A start form in FlowBoard.

Take employee onboarding to the next level

You can also create two separate onboarding process templates – one to be completed before the first day of work and second to start on the first day. When you create a FlowBoard account for an employee, they can be assigned the tasks you need them to do as a part of their orientation. In this way, your employee will know that they must read the employee handbook and company policies or prepare for the first 1-on-1.

Create a separate task list for the "First day of work" process (FlowBoard).

Try onboarding new employees with FlowBoard for free

Register a free account in FlowBoard to easily organize the new employee onboarding process and streamline work with key people from HR, IT and operations.